The new Gilmore Girls reboot jokes about how much New Yorkers love to queue for the newest craze,but locals have been lining up for Di Fara pizza for years.Arguably the finest slice in town comes from a no-frills shop front in Midwood,Brooklyn,about a 40-minute subway ride from Midtown.Store owner Domenico DeMarco,who was born in Italy,is in his late 70s and insists on making every pizza himself,which explains the wait.The queues begin before the store opens at 12(1pm on Sundays–DeMarco goes to church),and on weekends you will wait anywhere between 30 minutes to three hours.Expect an hour minimum,but it’s worth it.

Potent fancy cocktails

Tis the season for drinking fancy cocktails in snug settings,and nowhere seems more appropriate than the The Library at The Nomad,one of the bar spaces inside the NoMad Hotel on 28th and Broadway.French spiral staircases wind through the two-storey room full of wooden floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.A giant lit up fairytale holiday tree dominates the room.The cocktails are expensive and strong:I like the Broadway,an almost medicinal-like rye whisky drink for$17.

Iconic exhibitions

It’s not the most famous,but the Brooklyn Museum is the third largest in the city(only the Met and the Natural History Museum are bigger).Its permanent collection has some gems–the iconic,and deeply moving,feminist artwork The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago is on the fourth floor–but it really excels at exhibits,both of household names and local artists.Portrait painter Kehinde Wiley’s 2015 New Republic was the best art show I’ve ever seen(making the next door Basquiat notebooks exhibit look boring),and Chinese star Ai Weiwei and US artist Kara Walker have both had recent exhibits.Right now you can check out a collection of 53 drawings by 22 artists of a naked Iggy Pop,created from a life drawing class of the rock star led by Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller.